Re: non-free but distributable packages and kernel firmware

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 08:13:37AM -0400, Michael Poole wrote:
> Sven Luther writes:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > In the wake of the discussion about solving the murky non-free binary firmware
> > blobs in our linux kernel issue, there was a proposition to split out the
> > firmware blobs from the main drivers, and distribute them in a separate but
> > canonical place from ftp.kernel.org.
> >
> > As thus i was wondering if, together with the volatile effort, it would not be
> > time for us to split the non-free archive into two parts, namely :
> >
> >   1) non-free-but-freely-distributable
> >
> >   Which would hold all the files which are freely distributable, but fail one
> >   of the freely modificable criterias of the DFSG.
> >
> >   2) rest of non-free
> >
> >   Which would include all but the ones in the first part, and impose some
> >   furter restriction on distribution.
> 
> This has the strong smell of ranking some DFSG criteria above others
> in importance.  If you want this kind of distinction, I think a less
> discriminatory way would be to flag (internally or on a central web
> site somewhere) each package in non-free according to which parts of
> DFSG it fails.

Yep, that would be indeed a better solution, but you then need support
downloading only said parts.

As i said elsewhere, ideally, all non-free package should have a field listing
non-free reason keyword (no-source, restricted-distribution, other, ...), and
then we could match these keywords with apt-get or something.

But as the main problem in the non-free archive is distribution, be it for CDs
or for mirrors, i believe it would be easiest to have a different view for the
non-free distributable packages.

Friendly,

Sven Luther